If there is one thing I've learned over the past few years it is that Sweden knows how to do car shows, big car shows! Not content with a day event, or even a weekend event at a venue, our Scandinavian friends throw themselves into it for a week and take over entire towns. Events are I guess a bit like Worthersee, but with hot rods and lunatic Swedish cars.
The first event I'd like to draw your attention to is the Umeå Motorweek. Held in the Northern town of Umeå the Motorweek ran from 22nd to 27th of June this year, the week has a program of organised events including a number of cruises. The Motorweek and the Power Big Meet are both dominated by the strong American car and hot rod scene in Sweden, there are still some European cars floating around though. The Motorweek website actually has the best gallery of images I've been able to find so far,
so check it out here.
Heading down Sweden and nearer to Stockholm we find Västerås, home of the
Power Big Meet. It is a pretty big deal, to quote it's website "The Biggest American show in the world in Västerås, Sweden. More cars, more people, more swap meet vendors than you can believe.", it boasts over 10,000 cars for visitor numbers. Running on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of July this year the show, there are cruises on the Friday and Saturday night, but the organisers say that the Saturday night cruise is pretty over crowded. A meet this size doesn't just appear out of nowhere, in fact it has been going at various sites since 1978, so it has a lot of history to live up to.
Whilst it is mainly a show for American cars and hot rods there are classes for European cars in the competition, which as you can imagine brings out some of the finest modified Scandinavian cars. So lots to see no matter what you may be into, as long as it has four wheels. We've got a couple of good Flickr galleries for you to check out some of the action from this years event,
Sub Dive's gallery shows a nice spread from the event, as does
hotrod-factorys, whilst we particularly liked
hz's filtered photographs.
So two great shows in Sweden, a week or so apart, kind of makes sense to go out for Motorweek, then cruise down to Stockholm and across to the Power Big Meet ... the only question is, do you fly to Sweden and hire a car? Or do you drive there?
Posted on: July 9, 2009 04:36